Cote d'Azur

I woke up with a cracking headache.

The jet lag was fine.

The headache from all the absinthe was less OK.

The three of us dragged ourselves out of our rooms, changed and went downstairs for pastries and cafe au lait.  The sugar and butter from the pastries made me feel better immediately.  With the first sip of the coffee,  I was quickly reminded about how poor French coffee was.  The caffeine helped, but it still always surprised me that the French seemed to make such poor coffees given their love of all things gastronomical.  It was a bizarre oversight in an otherwise spotless resume.

Maya arrived a bit later in the morning to see us looking more dishevelled than she expected.  I'm sure she thought we were just tired and jet lagged.  Maya suggested we go for a drive along the coast.  Her idea was that we drive to either St Raphael or St Tropez and then drive back to our place in Juan le Pins.  With our heads feeling the way they were, we decided that St Raphael was clearly the best option (being of course the closest of the two options). 

St Raphael is a beautiful seaside town.  It was a spectacular day and the waters were crystal clear.  We put our feet into the water to see whether it was warm enough yet, but it was still a touch too cold for us to contemplate swimming.  That didn't deter the braver though, and we saw the occasional person slowly wading out into the waters.

The fresh air and the sunshine were the perfect cure for my headache.  I breathed in deeply and I immediately felt better.  It seemed to give me more energy and I felt like the excesses from the previous night were being beaten back.

We didn't stay too long and continued on our trip along the coast.  Before we left St Raphael, Maya managed to drive us down a one way street the wrong way, but thankfully we all survived.  As we drove further, we saw numerous signs for one of the Allied landing beaches during WWII.  I've always read deeply into WWII history, so this was interesting to me.  The others agreed to stop so that we could go and have a look at the landing spot.

There was nothing particularly "historic" about the place other than an old landing craft and memorial near the carpark.  The beach itself was different to what I had seen before.  Growing up in Australia, we are used to sandy beaches.  Over the last few years, I had even been to a few pebbly beaches, but this was different again.  At this beach, the pebbles were the size of your palm.  Were they even correctly labelled as pebbles?  Stones was probably a better description.  It was a stony beach.  As we stood there, when you listened you could hear the sounds of the pebbles/stones as the waves washed them up and down the shore line.  With every wave in and out, there was a low rumble, a rustling or crackling of the stones.

We kept driving.

The scenery was beautiful.  It was at times quite barren and all of us talked about how much it reminded us of parts of Australia.  Even the muted colours of olive, red and brown seemed to be something we were more familiar with.  We reached some very impressive rock formations and decided to climb around on them.

Maya was terrified of the heights, so she let us guys run further out to explore.  We wandered off and took our photos, then started to climb up and down some of the higher rocks.  Todd did his usual daredevil thing and managed to crawl into some unimaginably dangerous spots, dangling with one arm as he took some selfies.

The size of everything made me think more about Australia and the red rocks reminded me of the red ochre.  I hadn't expected this type of landscape to be here as I had expected more temperate surroundings.  When you think of France, you think of green fields and forests.  You don't really think about rocky outcrops and shrubs.

As we left, we had one more stop before heading back home with Maya.  We went to Cannes, mainly because there was a cake she wanted to buy for dinner.

I remember staying in Cannes several years ago when I was backpacking in the region.  It still looked the same.  We climbed to the top of the hill overlooking the town and looked out at the expensive hotels and boats in marina.  For such a wealthy and famous place, Cannes still had a relaxed atmosphere that I really liked.  It wasn't yet time for the festival though, so like the previous time I visited, it was very possible that I had just picked one of the few quieter times to visit.

After the long day, Maya suggested we go back to her home to rest up before dinner.  We suggested going back to our place in Juan le Pins first to get our car, but in the end we couldn't be bothered.  Back at Maya's place, Adam and the kids had already arrived and they were setting up for dinner.  Adam had brought out the raclette grill, which made me extremely happy.  Neither Phil nor Todd had ever experienced the simple joy that is a raclette dinner, so we spent the first few moments teaching them and showing them our own personal preferences.  I had never done their style of raclette before using the home grill and having vegetables and meats to accompany the cheese.  I had only eaten it in Switzerland, and there it was eaten much more simply with only potatoes and pickles.  I quite liked their approach though.  As much as I enjoy the simpler Swiss approach to eating, I'm still culturally Asian and Australian, so having the variety of vegetables and meats to accompany the melted cheese suited my palette.

Adam was very happy to have us all over and he pulled out bottle after bottle of champagne for us to drink with dinner.  The fizz and sweetness of the champagne complemented the cheese well, cutting into its richness.  The kids had their fill and wandered off.  I reached over and took the remaining food off of their plates.  Why let it go to waste?  Eventually, the adults also finished.  I sat back and kept drinking champagne with Phil as Todd and Adam moved onto a brief interlude of coffee.  The kids seemed to have a sixth sense for what was happening as they suddenly reappeared.  Perfect timing by the kids for dessert.  Maya had taken us to Cannes specifically for her favourite cake from the region, a "Tarte Tropezienne".

It was kind of like a sponge, but much firmer.  The filling was a thick, almost custard like cream.  Maya added a serving of fruit to it which was needed given how sweet the cake was.  The soft texture of the fruit also helped to balance out the hard and crust like texture of the cake.

Thankfully, we had decided against driving our own car up to Maya's place.  After several bottles of champagne I was feeling nicely buzzed, and none of us was in any state to drive.  We called a cab to take us back to Juan le Pins.